He explained that the cause of this embarrassing situation was the fact that the planning around managing the cash flow of multi-year projects was deficient. He also claimed that this situation was brought about by faster than expected progress, resulting in future year funding being used in advance.

In a follow-up question, I countered this by saying that the controversially awarded Siyenza sanitation project, where well connected ANC leadership figures and their families were involved, was paid with such enthusiasm that they were “favoured” with advance payments for millions of rands before any work was done.

The Premier said that is was “regrettable and unacceptable” that this situation had arisen. In this regard, I asked the Premier who would be paying the salaries of the people who had been retrenched or released due to this “suspension” of contracts. I also asked who was going to pay or how were contractors expected to pay their suppliers from whom millions of rands of goods and services have been procured in advance in order to fulfill their contracts.

The consequences of such incompetence and maladministration have catastrophic effects on the local Border and Eastern Cape economy, not to mention the hardship of unemployment, the liquidation of some companies and the negative impact of downgrading of their credit worthiness due to non payment of their suppliers. This is not a good story to tell, it is a tragic story of neglect, carelessness, woeful administration and inept leadership.

This situation can be spun by governmental spin-doctors, but the thousands of people who are directly and indirectly affected by this shambles know that this is not a good story to tell. The ANC can fool some of the people some of the time but not all the people all the time.

A DA government that espouses the values of Freedom, Fairness and Opportunity would never allow this situation to arise because we, stop corruption, start delivery and create jobs, not shed them.